


House of Raeken and Hale

by BIFF1



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Forced Wedding, Minor Character Death, royal au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:31:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5076121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BIFF1/pseuds/BIFF1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malia was nineteen and tomorrow she was going to tell her father she was going to the capital to join the resistance. There was no way she was going to let that bastard invader Theodore Raeken rule her country for any longer. However she doesn't really get the chance. The middle of the night something changes and the secret her father had been keeping from her all this time is about to come to light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Royal Welcome

Malia let her mind wander as she stalked through the forest. Her boots made no sound on the thick snow, her breath a long stream of hot fog, slow, even. The snow shifted and settled around her, it seemed as if had been snowing for years.

It hadn’t been years, but ever since the invasion it had been as if the entire mountain country had fallen into a cold melancholy. Three years of grey skies and greying eyes as if everything around her was welcoming death.

Malia wished this death would show up sooner rather than later. Some other form than the Latran invader prince. Some different version of death than the smiling handsome Theodore Raeken.

She clenched her back teeth at the very thought of that monsters name, she had to steady herself on a narrow birch tree. She was so tired of this winter, she missed the summers of her childhood. Her country, her beautiful Valwick used to be lush and green, vibrant.

The emerald of the mountains.

An emerald with a small military and easy access to the ocean.

They had been beautiful and strategic and easy.

They had fallen to Latran in only a year. No country was willing to come to their air in fear of being the next of Latran’s hit list.

Add to that the fact that the throne had been vacant since Derek Hale had abdicated to marry.

She wondered briefly what he thought of their situation now, was there even anything he could do?

She thought back on how her father had dodged the draft, how he had made her swear on her mothers grave to stop going into town, how she hadn’t been able to join the resistance in town or journey to Halesburg to join the real resistance. Maybe wherever Derek Hale was he felt the same as she did, ultimately helpless.

She spots hoof prints in the thick snow and turns her efforts towards them. Malia tried not to think about her father, about his flimsy excuses for not joining any sort of war effort, he had something more important he was doing for the country. She’d call bullshit if she hadn’t seen him listen to the radio every night so intently, as if waiting for a secret message, a combination of words only he would understand.

She always left the room when he did that, she couldn’t stand the propaganda. It made her so angry. Angry at everything, at the House of Raeken, at the House of Hale for falling so easily, at her father from keeping her away from the fight, at the missing heir they always went on about for not showing their face and ridding them of Theodore Raeken and his tightening grip on her country.

If she could only get close enough to that smug foreign bastard.

She aims her crossbow at a deer across the clearing, focusing her anger and frustration into the bolt she let it fly, wishing so desperately that that smug usurper was on the other end.

The deer collapses to the ground, red staining the snow, large legs twitching unhappily, painfully. Malia moves quickly, dropping down on her knees in front of the deer, pulling her knife out of her boot and makes short work of killing the animal.

The deer should be more than enough to last them until she could convince her father to let her join the underground in town. She was nineteen he couldn’t keep her locked up like this. Grabbing the deer she hoists it over her shoulders and makes her way slowly through the forest to their cabin.

A majority of the night is spent butchering the deer with her father, she’s been in a sour mood since he had shut down her request to go to town a couple days ago but the venison should help to lighten her mood.

She loved venison.

It even managed to take some of the burn out of the radio broadcast. They didn’t have a tv, or the internet and she had been the only person at school the didn’t have a cellphone (she had a beeper like some 90’s doctor or drug dealer). They had lived ‘off grid’ for as long as she could remember, sneaking off into town to her friends house to watch Eurovision, but the old crackling radio was the only piece of real technology her father had allowed.

It held a place of honor on the mantle beside her mother’s photo and the paintings she had made as a child.

The burn and edge was dulled by the promise of venison but the flow of quick, even, rich tones of Theo Raeken and his cavalcade of public officials made her itch.

A new curfew was being set in lieu of some bombings in the capital that she wished she had had a hand in, the German foreign minister was returning to Germany and was likely to _blah blah blah._

She zoned out the bastard’s voice.

She hated it because it oozed like honey over the words, coating everything in something easy to swallow. He was too good at this, at this handsome, kind _lord_ here to save them from an empty throne.

Malia grumbles her goodnight to her father and leaves the living room, climbing the stairs and disappearing into her bedroom in hopes to forget all about Theodore Raeken and the lost war at least for eight hours.

She gets about four.

She had always slept lightly, she thought it was a curse but her father so often praised it that sometimes she actually agreed with him. The night changes, the calm spring breeze changes, shifts, the sounds of the woods around the house all became wrong and she found herself staring at the ceiling of her bedroom pushing a hand between her mattress and box spring searching out metal.

“Dad…” She whispers roughly as her fingers finally grab hold of the metal and return to her wrapped around her pocket knife.

He doesn’t respond but she can hear his voice, low, seemingly far away, downstairs echoed by the fuzz of static.

Malia gets dressed without letting go of the blade, boots tied tight she makes her way down the stairs, skipping the third step that always creeks, her eyes adjusting to the darkness she can finally see her father, standing at the mantle listening hard to the radio as it repeats something over and over again.

_Papa Indigo Charlie_

_Coyote dies at midnight_

_Papa Indigo Charlie_

_Coyote in the hen house_

_Papa Indigo Charlie_

“What is that supposed to mean?” She asks and when her father turns to look at her he looks worried and a little too hard, he doesn’t even try to hide the gun in his hand.

“Good you’re up. Lets go.” He walks to her and reaches out for her arm.

“What’s going on? Are you the coyote? Was that message for you? Where are we going?” She asks watching as her father grabs a backpack from out under a floorboard he had been meaning to fix for years now.

“It’s not me, it’s about you.” He tells her as if that would explain everything, and maybe it would if it wasn’t so obvious that he had been keeping secrets from her.

He pushes the bag at her, “Don’t lose this and don’t look in the backpack until you are safe.”

Henry Tate opens the door, letting in the odd night air and starts out into the night, into the woods towards town and she rushes after him pausing to lock the door behind her.

“Where are we going?” She asks again following him through the still thick snow, stepping in his tracks like he had taught her.

“We are taking the first train to Kurtsoff and then to Berlin. I have a contact there that will take care of you.”

“Take care of me? What do you mean?”

“There is someone I need to see in Halesburg.”

“Halesburg? You’re not going to the capital without me.” The backpack is heavy and she wonders if it’s hiding the secret that he’s been harboring, that if she is now carrying that oh so important mission he was doing instrad of going to war.

“It’s too dangerous there for you-”

“I’m nineteen I can handle-”

“I only need to make a quick stop at a bar and I’ll be on my way to meet you-”

“A bar?”

“The Badge and Wolf…” He tells her absently as if he’s reminding himself more than talking to her. She knows he won’t budge letting her go with him. He wasn’t the budging kind of parent.

The town is dead silent, even though it’s four in the morning and the mine should be changing shift and minute now and the bakers always started up their ovens by now.

Silent, dead silent and something heavy sat in her stomach pulling her down at the feel of it. She hadn’t been in town for almost a full year, her father had gone to town with her for her birthday so she could have dinner with friends. Then it had still been the vibrant town she had grown up with, people clinging to the harvest festivals and the dances the mine always put on while the rest of the country grew increasingly grey.

The grey, hollow feelings she had heard about had finally made it here and it made her sick and angry.

What had that bastard done to her town, to her country.

They take side streets through town to the train station and she doesn’t know why they bother until they reach a crossroad and they have to cross main street and there are men on street counters, men she knows, boys she went to school with, in that black and tan uniform with the wrong coat of arms on it.

Things had been changing while she and her father had been hiding in the forest. Raeken’s grip around her country was tightening.

They make it to the train station without getting stopped but that certainly isn’t going to be the case for much longer. There is a crowd of people trying to get to the train platform, strict cruel looking men are checking paperwork and her father grabs her by the arm and pulls them into a side street out of the officers view.

“Shit.” He whispers, “I had no idea it had gotten this bad…”

“Malia?”Someone whispered her name and turning she saw an old man leaning heavily on a cane, "Henry?" It was doctor Harad, their family doctor... The entire towns family doctor.

Her father's grip on her hand tightened.

"Jerry."

“What are you still doing here?” The old man barely looked at her father, he was staring at her with a look she couldn’t really place.

“We need the train to Kurtsoff.” Her father supplies and the doctor nods.

“Follow.” Dr. Harad motions for them to follow and starts back the way he had come. They slip between two buildings and over a narrow bridge she had never seen before that takes them over the tracks.

Dr. Harad knocks his cane against the side of the wall of the old train platform, the one that’s been shut down since she was ten. To her surprise the wall actually opens up, well part of it, a small panel opens and an old woman pokes her head out.

Mrs. Stannersly, her eighth grade English teacher and the woman who told her she should join the debate team. Her eyes are hard and narrow as she looks across the three of them until they fall on Malia properly, they soften and she lets her and her father in through the hole in the wall.

From there they board the train quickly from the wrong side, a steerage car. She doesn’t bother to ask why they can’t ride in the passenger cars like normal people. They’ve never been normal people and it was obvious, considering how they had to get onto the train that whatever they were it was political undesirables.

She had always assumed that her father used to a wanted man, or on a secret government mission and the way this night has gone is proving that one of those wild theories must have been correct.

Malia sits down on a steamer trunk next to her father and stares at the backpack she can’t open.

Her father’s hand rests on her own, “Get some rest.” He tells her softly before setting an alarm on his watch, “It’s a long way to Kurtstoff.”

-

The lurch of the train wakes her up. Her father is already standing and peeking out of a crack in the side of the wooden wall.

“What’s going on? We can’t be in Kurtstoff yet.” She rubs the sleep out of her eyes, standing and crossing the car to settle beside her father and looking out her own crack.

It certainly isn’t Kurtstoff. Kurtstoff was a small boarder town in the mountains, the joke was that every time a passenger train stopped in Kurtsoff the population went up by at least half. This wasn’t a small town, this wasn’t a small train station. This wasn’t a train station at all.

There was a slight slope down towards a large square, it seemed like the type of place festivals would have happened or where farmers markets would spring up in the good months. It was very obvious that this wasn’t one of the good months.

A semi-circle of soldiers, in that same wrong uniform has sprung up instead.

“This isn’t Kurtstoff…” She narrows her eyes, searching out over the low roofs of the area, out into the jagged teeth of a real city, of something large enough to swallow her alive.

She doesn’t need to seeThe Blue House to know where they are. Halesburg. The sun is coming up and the sun is breaking through the grey sky, lighting up the uniformed men golden.

“Malia.” Her father grabs her arm and pulls her back away from the wall, turns her roughly to face him, he looks worried, he looks rough and stern but under everything, under the beard and the stern features of his face she can see the worry radiating out of him and it makes her cold.

“What is it? They can’t be for us, they must be for someone else on the train. Don’t worry dad, it’ll be fine.” She pats his arm but he’s pulling a pistol out of his jacket and forcing it into her hand.

“They are going to try and take you.” There is zero room for arguing, his tone is too flat, too even, “I’ll do everything I can, but run. Run far away. Run into the forest, into the mountains, run to Berlin. There’s a an there, Argent. He owes me a favor. He hangs out in a bar on Quay street.” He pulls her in tight to his chest and she can’t shake the cold in her, it’s sinking all the way down into her bones because this seems too big to heavy to do on her own.

“Dad… What’s going on? You’re talking like I’ll never see you again.”

“I love you sweetheart. I just wish we had had more time. Once you’re in Berlin, once you're safe the papers in the backpack will tell you everything. I love you, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

“Of course not. I love you too dad.”

He smiles softly at her, readies his own gun and puts a hand on the handle of the car.

“Ready?”

She checks her gun, feels the familiar weight and the click of the barrel and nods. He rips the door open.

Henry Tate, the man who had taught her everything, how to read, and walk, and talk, how to shoot and track and tie her shoelaces jumps down from the car and aims his gun at an entire company of uniformed men.

She jumps down behind him, pistol in her hand, loaded and ready, to run, to fight, she’s not sure but the reaction she gets from her rough entrance is confusion.

A buzz of people, a crowd she can’t see over the uniformed men with guns, a roar of noise, up overhead the noise of helicopters becomes more clear. The news, and more sinister black silhouettes.

She grabs the back of her father’s jacket, aiming the barrel out at the crowd of men, searching for sudden movements, for weak links.

The men shuffle aside for a man in a slightly different uniform, the navy and blood red of the Hale royal army, of a high ranking officer.

“Why am I not surprised it’s you Tate?” He bellows over the buzz of noises, “I knew you hadn’t died in that fire.”

“General.” Is all that her father replies with and the older man seems to bustle unhappily from it.

There is a movement behind the large man, a gloved hand claps down on the man’s arm and pushed him aside.

Her insides freeze because starring at her with a laser focus is the handsome and evil Theodore Raeken.

She whips her gun across the crowd to aim at his chest. He smiles at the action and before anyone can do or say anything she steps out of her father’s shadow and sends three bullets into the tyrant’s chest.

He flies back from the impact and the ranks of men descend into an odd almost orderly chaos.

Bullets start flying and her father grabs her by her forearm and swings her away behind him, pushing her away from the dictator and the general, sending them both running towards the weaker part of the line.

She can hear the bullets zipping past her but nothing lands, she looks back worried her father is acting as a shield and she almost stops entirely.

“Don’t shot her you idiots! We need her alive!” Raeken yells standing, a little wobbly on his feet ripping off a kevlar vest to stand glaring at everyone in his under shirt and uniform pants and high riding boots, “Kill the man!” He orders pointing out at her father and the barrage takes a new focus.

“Dad!” She yells but he pushes her forward.

“Ru-” His yell is cut off as he crumbles to the ground. She’s staring at him, at his body, he hadn’t been wearing a vest, and blood was seeping out away from the body staining the pale stones.

Malia lets out an anguished scream, an almost roar of a thing and when a uniformed man tries to grab her she snaps roars again, sending the butt of the pistol hard into his head and twisting in his grip she tosses him aside.

_Run_

_Mountains_

_Germany_

_Berlin_

_Quay street_

She lets the words, her fathers voice in her head repeat as she makes a hole through the armed men. Whatever it is they want with her they want her alive so no more pistols are drawn.

They fall easily, her father had been training her in hand to hand combat since she could walk. On top of her skill they seem to be afraid of her. She’s snapped an arm and is letting out her fear and sorrow out in uncontrolled violence. She’s frantic and angry and scared and crying, tears blurring her vision she breaks the ranks.

She breaks the ranks and comes face to face with a crowd of regular people watching her, watching the screens hanging overhead, trained on her. On the blood on her jacket and knuckles of the empty pistol in her hand, her wild hair and crying eyes.

She chances the back of her hand across her eyes and can see the label running under the news feed.

_Missing Hale Heir Returns._

“What?” She whispers, “No, I’m not…”

“Lady Hale.” A whisper ripples through the crowd and they fall to their knees for her and she turns slowly to watch as they drop. She turns back the way she came and see’s him.

Theodore Raeken was coming for her himself.

She swears low under her breath and takes off running. The national anthem echoes against the marble building as she runs, but somehow underneath the patriotic lyrics she can hear boots slamming into the ground behind her.

She turns to see how much distance she has but it’s a mistake because the answer was none. He’s too close and he jumps slamming into her taking them both down to the ground, Raeken on top of her.

The pistol is gone, she lost it in the fall, she can see it behind him, useless. Instead Malia slams her fist into the side of his head, fingers digging into scalp, legs kicking and rocking trying to throw him.

He’s smiling at her and it’s unnerving.

“Oh, you’re going to be fun aren’t you.” His smile only gets brighter when she punches him in the eye and he reels back giving her enough room to squirm away.

“I’ll kill you!” She screams, “You killed my father, you killed my country I’m going to destroy you Theodore Raeken!” She kicks out at him angrily but he grabs a hold of her boot and pulls her back, grabbing her wildly swinging fists and kneeling on her.

He raises a hand, a fist and she stares directly at him, into his eyes, at the eyes that don’t smile like his mouth does.

“We’ll see.” He tells her evenly but he doesn’t punch her, his hand unfurls and he pulls her up onto her feet and hands her over to several men in the dark navy and silver uniforms of the Raeken private police. Theo bows at her, “It’s wonderful to finally meet the infamous missing Hale heir. I’ve heard so much about you.” His smile reaches his eyes for a brief moment, “I look forward to our pending nuptials.”

_“Our what?!”_


	2. Portraits of Strangers

She had bruises on her arms, her hands, her knees, every part of her ached, every inch of her that had fought against Raeken and the private police was yellowing, skin broken at the knuckles she sat on the edge of a large old claw foot tub staring at the dried blood on her skin.

 

Malia was the heir to the Hale throne.

 

The daughter of Mad Duke Peter and a disgraced dead general.

 

It was all there, spread out on the floor in front of her in stark black and white, redacted files, medical documents, photos, blood work.

 

Everything was there and she had devoured ever piece of paper the moment she had been alone.

 

They had tried to take the backpack from her. She had broken the man’s hand and pulled a knife out of her boot, she would kill anyone who tried to take it from her.

 

The man with two good hands had tossed her into this suite of rooms, locking the door behind her with some choice words.

 

Malia had hoped that something useful would be in the bag, maps, rope, climbing tools, not the life shattering paperwork telling her so much of her life had been a lie.

 

He hadn’t been her father.

 

There was paperwork in the bag about operation Coyote, her, she was operation Coyote, a back up plan for the crown. Keep her away from her father, her decidedly crazy father, raise her away from his influence, keep her safe.

 

 

He loves her. Her father loves her.

 

_I love you sweetheart_

 

_I love you, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise_

 

LovED, loved. Passed tense.

 

She drops from the tub, her knees slamming into tile, she wraps, aching hands around the toilet seat and proceeds to be sick. He had just… dropped, crumbled to the ground, dead.

 

It was a lot to process, her father wasn’t her father, but he was, he always would be, he was dead by Raeken’s order. She’d kill him. That wasn’t hard to process.

 

She wipes her mouth and grabs the paperwork, shoving it back into the canvas her hands skim along a different material, something slick and matte all at once, something narrow and she pulls it out and almost loses another batch of stomach acid.

 

It’s a picture, its a bunch of strips of pictures, every year growing up as far back as she could remember and even farther they went to the carnival in town and went to the photo booth.

 

Seventeen strips of photos, every year they had be together.

 

Pressing them to her chest she takes the bag out of the bathroom, legs shaking a little, vision blurred, sick and filled with a mix of incurable sorrow and rage. Incurable… maybe not. She had a pretty good idea what would cure her.

 

She hides the bag in an old vent. No one else needed to know who had ordered Operation Coyote, there were contacts in there that she would need and her father-no-yes, her father had taught her the importance of secrecy, of loyalty.

 

There’s a noise on the other side of the door and pulling the knife from it’s home in her boot she walks slowly towards the door, setting the photos down on the bed. She treads softly, the lush rugs eating up the sounds, her eyes darting around the room for exits, there was a balcony,she could take her chances there, there was also an odd draft coming from behind the wardrobe that didn’t seem to make sense.

 

There’s noises, voices, arguing.

 

_She’s hurt I want to see her. She needs medical attention, I don’t even want to know what you monsters-_

 

_Monsters? She broke Lt Ellis’ hand._

 

_Open the door or I’ll go to Theo-_

 

There’s grumbling in a rough foreign language before the door unlocks.

 

She waits, lets the door open as far as she’s sure it will, and she darts out. Slamming unworried into a slight boy and sending her fist into the large man’s throat.

 

Malia runs down the hall and she can’t decide if she wants to be discreet about her murderous rage or not. An alarm sounds overhead and decides for her.

 

“Raeken! Raeken where are you!” She screams barreling in and out of immaculate rooms, through doors that are older than some of the towns the train had passed through until she finally ends up on a courtyard a large white walled thing, palace on three sides, a dead fountain in the center, dead beds of flowers, snow sticking to the edges the fourth wall low giving a brilliant view of the valley and Halesburg.

 

“Raeken!” She screams and she could have sworn that it echoed all the way down the valley, “Face me!”

 

“What is it _my darling_?” The voice is that honey sweet, dark oozing thing from above her. Looking up she see’s a balcony and Theodore, invader, murderer, prince, is leaning causally against the railings looking down at her a smile on his face.

 

“Come down here and fight me.”

 

He shakes his head, “I have a budget to approve and an afternoon filled with meetings.” He sighs unhappily, “Perhaps you can entertain me after dinner.” His smile pulls to the side, his eyes narrow at her for a moment as he pushes away from the railing, “Let Corey look after you, you’re a mess.” He turns his back on her to go back into what must be an office.

 

She lets out a roar and throws her knife at him.

 

It doesn’t hit him.

 

The blade embeds itself into the open door to the left of him.

 

“Next time I won’t miss-” She hisses her attention falling from the balcony to the door she had rushed through.

 

A young man, the boy she had pushed over in her rush to kill, is standing in the doorway holding a first aid kit and a nervous disposition.

 

She lowers her head and he seems to take it as a sign to approach her. She’s not sure if that's what it was or not, she just knows she’s tired.

 

“Hello…” He whispers reaching out a hand, palm up like she was some sort of wild animal that might bite him, “I’d like to clean you’re cuts if that’s okay.” Looking at him he’s thin and nervous, way too nervous to be any sort of threat.

 

She puts her hand in his and watches his mouth turn up slightly, his eyes are dark but kind and he doesn’t say anything as he leads her back to the room she is staying in.

 

Once they are back in the room, a new set of guards on the door, he starts cleaning her cuts chatting softly about things she couldn’t find it in her to care about.

 

“I’m Corey by the way, Corey Raeken.” He smiles sheepishly as he cuts some gauze, “Not very regal I know. Your name is much better.  _Malia Hale_.” He said it almost reverently but is sounded terrible to her, it twisted her stomach and she grabbed at the photos on the bed next to her.

 

“ _Tate_.” She tells him firmly.

 

“What?”

 

“It’s Malia Tate.” She holds the photos to her chest again and wonders if she’s going to be sick again. If the thought of her father was going to make her crumble and rage and cry.

 

She looks at Corey and he looks confused, “I’ll be a Tate until the day I die and long after that I don’t care what my dna says. It’s what my heart says that matters.”

 

-

  
She hates this place. Hates it.

 

The palace is sickening.

 

It’s been a week and a half since she had been taken to The Blue House and her skin crawls.

 

It was the jewel of Valwick on the outside, beautiful blue roofs, bright clean white walls, smooth curves and intricate details carved into arches. Inside… inside it was rotten.

 

She had always wanted to see the inside of the palace before. She had had the chance once, in the fifth grade but her father hadn’t signed her permission slip. Malia remembered being so mad at him but she understood now.

 

Trapped.

 

She felt trapped in this place and she knew she would have felt it then too and just not understood. More than anything else she craved the freedom of her forest, of the rich low voice of her father, the crunch of snow under her boots, that particular crackle of the ancient radio.

 

The sound of straining ripping fabric fills her senses. She has the television on, she doesn’t know what station, she doesn’t care what program. The novelty of finally having access to a television had never really set in. The fact that she wasn’t allowed out of the room except to go to dinner with Corey (always with Corey) had kind of overshadowed the access to national television.

 

She thinks its a Simpson’s rerun but she’s too focused on braiding the fabric to pay any attention.

 

_Sixteen years in the remote village of West Haven-_

 

Malia looks up at the screen. Its the news. A middle aged women with wide brown eyes and red lips is looking into the camera, out right at her and she shuffles papers in her hands. There's a photo of her on the screen next to her and she stands up, giving it her full attention. It’s playing the footage from the day she got here, her running like a wild animal.

 

A photo of her father, a little younger, without any scruff, it’s probably at least sixteen years old. He’s wearing the burgundy and black of the Queen’s guard.

 

She turns the television up.

 

_Tate, a disgraced former member of the Queen’s guard had kidnapped the young heir from the palace. Prince Raeken or anyone from the palace has yet to comment on the act of treason._

 

_Her majesty Malia Hale is safe, being personally attended too by Doctor Raeken, the youngest of the Raeken family and a well regarded physician._

 

So Corey was a doctor. It explained a lot about him really. The word kidnapped sounded sour to her ears, made her burn. She hadn’t kidnapped her, he had taken her to safety, away from her mad father, kept her safe and loved and the look of disgust on the woman’s face as she said her final personal touch to the story fractured something in her.

 

_I can’t imagine what a horror it must have been for her majesty, the man looks like a monster-_

 

_I sure know I wouldn’t want him around my daughter_

 

The other anchor added and Malia let out a scream she didn’t know she was holding back. She felt like she was on fire and grabbed the television with both hands dropping her makeshift rope to the ground and with a rage she was getting all to familiar with threw the television at the large window.

 

It sailed through the glass, sending shinning pieces of glass across the floor and carpets.

 

She looked quickly back at the doors and rushed to lock them.

 

“What’s going on in there!” A guard yells from the other side of the door clacking metal on the other side scratching the wood to get the key in. She pulls a heavy fainting couch across the floor and sets it heavily down in front of the door.

 

The rope isn’t quite ready but she’s not likely to get a better chance to get out of this rotting prison. Malia ties one end of the rope around one of the posts of the bed and the other around her waist and rushes across the room putting on her backpack and putting her knife back in her boot she climbs out of the broken window all the while a guard is shouting from the other side of a locked and blocked door.

 

The wind is sharp and fast out here. Her feet braced against the smooth wall.

 

She looks down and swallows hard because this isn’t the gate side like she had thought it was, below her is the valley, she’s cliffside held up by high thread count and willpower.

 

Malia focuses, on slow, even breaths, on her hands, the tension of the rope, the ledge below her that spells freedom even if it is really far away and very narrow.

 

She’d worry about that when she got there.

 

She starts climbing down and everything seems to be going well until the rope gets taught. Looking up she can see several men in uniform and Corey leaning down looking down at her.

 

“Malia!” Corey yells out and she feels a little bad for the young doctor. Not bad enough to go back. She’d send him a postcard from Berlin.

 

“Malia! You’re going to fall!”

 

Only if those uniform assholes keep messing with her rope.

 

“Malia come back inside! Please!”

 

There’s something strange in his voice and she narrows her eyes up at him. He is crying she’s sure of it.

 

“Malia please. We can sort this out just- I don’t want you to get hurt.”

 

She shakes her head and tries to ignore him but her boot slips on the wall and she loses her footing completely. Corey yells from above her but the uniforms have a hold of her rope and are pulling her steadily up. She hangs there unhappily letting them do all the work.

 

They pull her back into the room and Corey wraps his arms around her and she sighs unhappily.

 

“Never do anything like that again-” Corey cries into her shoulder.

 

She crosses her fingers behind her back looking around Corey to the guards and the broken window, at freedom.

 

“Of course.”

 

—

They stop locking the doors but there are always guards in the halls with stern cruel looks and she isn’t allowed out of the small area her new rooms are in without Corey and a uniformed escort.

 

Her new room doesn’t have a tv. It used to but they obviously had it removed and replaced it with a small lightweight radio that couldn’t have broken paper if it tried.

 

It’s been two weeks since the train, since her father was mowed down, since she was captured. The radio called it rescued but it was so obviously not true that it made he sick. She had always felt that the news reports were filled with lies and half truths but she had never been at the heart of anything like this before.

 

All the radio did was play bubblegum pop and talk about her. Her and Raeken, how the horrible fairy tale life of isolation in the forest had finally ended and she was now in the castle where she belonged. They talked about fabricated happiness, relief.

 

_And wedding bells._

 

She stops her search of the room and gives the radio her full attention. Corey and Raeken had hinted at a wedding but she hadn’t been able to get any solid details out of the small doctor and she had only caught glimpses of Theodore in the palace. Staring at her with cold eyes from across rooms, standing at the back of crowds when she made trouble with a look dancing between amusement and tired disappointment.

 

The high voiced chipper radio personality gushed about rumors of a wedding between the damningly attractive Theodore Raeken, and the stunning lost heir. How they had found in each other something she could only wish for.

 

Rumor had it there would be a press conference at the end of the month confirming the engagement.

 

_No wonder we haven’t seen any of Lady Hale, if I had Prince Theo locked up in Blue House you wouldn’t see any of me either. You know what I mean-_

 

The pair of radio personalities laugh and call each other names in that way that only friends could.

 

Malia shakes her head at them and turns the radio off, if she could get Prince Theo alone like they seemed to think she could she’d put a knife through his stupid handsome face.

 

They had at least stopped talking about her father as some sort of monster. The idea of a royal wedding and a happy ending for this story was far too appealing to the news outlets. Anything to distract from the rebellion picking up speed in the city below, from the crippling curfews and increasing military presence.

 

Malia turns back to her search of the room and finds a book that doesn’t quite fit in the bookcase. She pushes it back to line up with the other spines and something clicks and the bookcase next to her swings open a little in a breeze.

 

Anxious to get away from the luxury of her prison she steps into the secret passageway and follows it down and down and down.

 

She must be deep under the palace proper by the time it comes out and she feels something akin to happiness for the first time since she got on that train because god, oh god, it’s the armory.

 

It’s dusty and filled with blades and old muskets and spears, kegs of gun powder and cases of explosives and she inhales deeply the scent of dust and rust the tools of freedom all around her.

 

Malia runs her hands across the rows of spears and swords and tries to decide just which one to take.

 

She decides on a short flat fat sword, it’s a little too heavy for her but she doesn’t want to spend her entire day in the room nitpicking over which blade to use to cut her pathway to freedom.

 

She’d get out of her, disappear into the forest, they’d never find her there and she’d use the rebellion to get to Berlin like her father had wanted.

 

With her ear pressed against the door she listens to the movements outside. There are more men then she thought there would be. She would have to take them by surprise.

 

She had that on her side at least and the fact that surely they would have to capture not kill.

 

With a well placed kick the door is in splinters around her and she’s in what looks like the barracks. Sending the heavy hilt into a man’s face she initiates the fight.

 

They start one at a time and she always found that so foolish but appreciates it now.

 

Chaos is swirling around her and she welcomes it because she is one person, she doesn’t need to communicate with anyone.

 

The blade is old and dull but does a fair amount of damage anyway in her hands. Two men are on the floor, unconscious or injured in a way that excludes them from the fight she doesn’t care which. She just cares about getting out the door behind them because the windows suggest that it leads outside.

 

The radio is cracking around her, Latin and that rough language of those foreign invaders fills the room but she can hear the word Raeken over and over again and she hopes she can get through them before Corey shows his stupid sad sweet face.

 

He was a weakness and they must all have figured that out by now.

 

Three more men are down and she rushes the door but it opens onto a courtyard instead of to freedom and in front of her stands Theodore Raeken and his especially cruel looking private police.

 

“Get out of my way Theodore or I’ll kill every last person in this place.” She growls raising her sword for a fight, the one on the end is smaller she’s sure she could take him out with the sword and take the gun he’s pointing at her.

 

“Stop this nonsense Malia.”

 

“Never.” She hisses quietly.

 

“If you put down the sword and go quietly to a new room I will give you a gift.” He had been reading too many psychology textbooks if he thought he could use a carrot over a stick to get her to submit. The only thing he had that she wanted was her country back and she knew he wouldn’t give that up to stop a fight.

 

“You don’t have anything I want.”

 

“On the contrary.” Theodore smiles slow and smug like he’s already won, “You’re father is due to be buried in a mass grave this afternoon. He is a traitor and a monster after all.”

 

“What…” the sword lowers suddenly heavy in her hands.

 

“I’ll give you his body. You can bury him however you like. Just put the sword down and be a good girl.”

 

She drops the sword.

 

She hadn’t thought of her fathers body. It was just a body after all, she had thought about his murder, revenge, she had thought endlessly on how to clear him of those horrible things the news said about him but she hadn’t thought about his body.

 

That he’d be tossed unceremoniously into a random hole and not be marked. That she would never be able to find him.

 

“I want to bury him at home. In the forest, he would have like it there.”

 

“Whatever you want  _darling_. After the wedding of course.” He waves and two of the larger men step forward and grab her by the arms.

 

—

Her newest bedroom had a secret passage she hadn't explored yet. Corey had somehow managed to get Theo and the slimy council to agree to letting her out into the palace. He seemed to be the catch. She had to drag Corey around with her, his nervous disposition had calmed over the days they had spent together, she really wondered how he was a Raeken, he was too kind, too nervous, too sweet for that monstrous house.

 

Then again, as they walked through yet another hallway lined with portraits of her family she had no idea how she fit in there either. They were all calm and stoic, logical and levelheaded according to the history books (all but her father that is), and she had this burn in her, this emotional raging feeling.

The Hale family had a habit of putting everything aside for the betterment of the country. They had been selfless and she was selfish and violent and she raged against these portraits of strangers Corey was treating like her family.

She had had a family of one, and just a month ago she had seen him mowed down by Corey's brother, by her apparent fiancé.

"Next week they will announce the wedding..." Corey whispers not looking at her. Staring at his hands like he wishes he could just disappear.

"I'm not marrying him. He has to know that, everyone must know I'd rather kill him then marry Theodore."

"Theo, he hates Theodore." Corey tells her absently as if that wouldn't give her a special kind of pleasure out of the name, "the tutor is coming tomorrow to put you through a crash course so you can be at his side during the announcement."

She hisses and runs a finger over a plaque on a large portrait. Duchess Malia Catherine Rogers Hale.

She looks up at the dark Flemish hues, dark browns and reds up into the dark eyes they share, glaring at the stretch of the paintings mouth and recognizing it as her own strained smile.

"Malia?"

"I don't know any of these people."

 

"Well that one died in 1874 so I'm not really surprised." He's smiling she can tell without looking. Corey was an open book to her, perhaps because her father had taught her to pay attention, perhaps because she was just as lost in this place as he seemed to be.

She knew without asking that his father didn't care to look at him, knew that he wasn't used to being seen, knew too many things about him.

He was the only person in the entire palace that felt like a real person to her, that didn't feel like a stranger staring out at her from behind brushstrokes and lacquer, who didn't look out at her behind toy soldier dead eyes.

"I don't want to be here anymore." She grumbled and turned on her heel to make her way back to her rooms, through the solarium and library and three different rooms that seemed to have no purpose other than to be lavish and take up space.

Corey was quick on her heels and he grabs her hand. She shakes him off and he staggers at the force.

"We can't go back yet!" He yelps, "Lets go to the kitchen, you must be hungry right?"

She narrows her eyes at him and takes off towards her rooms afraid of what's being done, are they going through her things, tossing the rooms for the backpack, for the paperwork. Destroying her photos.

 

If they touch her photos she will kill everyone in this place, she will destroy everyone, maids, solders, secret police, councilmen, Corey, Theodore. She'd take a blood soaked throne and welcome the war it would start.

Maybe she had the mad dukes blood running through her after all.

The doors to her rooms are wide open and she stops dead at the threshold. They aren't destroying anything, the hall outside the rooms are filled with large portraits of people she doesn't know, of family she doesn't feel any connection too.

They are replacing furniture and photos with her things. Her photos and furniture from home. The armchair her father used to sit in to read her stories, of photos of her and her father, replacing the paintings on the mantle with her father's radio and photos and she's going to break apart.

 

"It was supposed to be a surprise." Corey whispers beside her and she turns to him vision blurred.

 

"Did you do this...thank you..." She bites her lip to pull the tears back in, watching as a maid throws the quilt she and her father had made for a school project over the large bed, "Corey I don't..."

 

"It wasn't me." He whispers, he seems to whisper everything but when she looks at him he's staring out into the rooms, "Theo-"

 

"Don't." She tells him sharply putting a hand on his wrist, "Don't ruin this, don't taint this with his name. Not today."

 

"He's really not that bad Malia."

  
If he was going to say anymore the look on her face must deter him because he doesn't say anything else. He mumbles something about leaving her alone to check everything and disappears down a narrow hall she hadn't even noticed.

  
Corey seemed to be good at that, as desperate as he was for her friendship, he seemed to excel at finding cracks in armor, secret ways to places no one had thought of before. She didn't think for a second that if this really was Theodore's doing that he hadn't gotten the idea from Corey.

 

"Get out." She growls and the servants and soldiers scurry out.

 

She slams all the doors closed and locks them from the inside for the first time and grabs the quilt off the bed and curls up in her father's armchair.

—

She wakes up early.

She always wakes up early, she always had and her father had encouraged it. They used to get more done before she went to school then some people managed with a whole day.

Living in The Blue House hasn't changed her, she would have to be here longer than a month for that and she had no intention of letting that happen one way or another.

There is a secret passage in this room she hasn't yet taken all the way to its end and she grabs her backpack out of its third hiding place, in the hopes that this one leads outside.

Wiggling her fingers into a hole in the brickwork of the fireplace she presses against a latch and watched as the paneled wall next to the fireplace unlocked and swung open on ancient hinges. It was a very narrow stairwell.

Malia squeezes herself into the dark space in the wall and lets the door close behind her.

The passageway is narrow and she keeps scraping her arms on the rough stone. It's long and at one point gets so narrow she has to take the backpack off and take the stairs sideways.

There's a single door at the end of the tunnel and she is honestly not sure where it might leads, she's been going up and down in this passage for what feels like days.

Taking a deep breath she opens the narrow door and slips through.

It's a room.

It's a large dark room, its a mess, large red velvet curtains with golden embellishments lay on the parquet floor. Piles of golden frames, and antiques lay scattered on the floor between her and the main part of the room. Carefully she sidesteps the piles, it must be some sort of forgotten room used as a storage room possibly centuries ago.

Except that the room didn't smell of dust at all.

Slipping through the dark piles she steps into the clear large space of a bedroom, the curtains, high large two story things are navy and silver and it twists something in her gut. The Hale colors were red, reds and browns and bronze golds, but all the fabric actually being used in this large room had been replaced with Raeken colors.

Maybe it was Corey's room. Maybe she had accidentally gotten linked to Corey's room.

She hides the backpack in a pile of discarded curtains and moves quietly through the room, treading carefully her footsteps silent on the hard old floor.

 

The paintings in this room have all been replaced as well, a painting of the current reigning Raeken house hangs heavily over the mantle in a cold silver mantle. Three old men, a man in his late twenties probably, dark hair and eyes, standing next to Theodore. At the forefront of the painting are four teenagers, two girls, two guys one of them, Corey, on the edge in front of Theodore. Theodore has his hand on Corey's shoulder.

It hurts some part of her that Corey seems so separated from the rest of the painting.

There are photos on the mantle below the painting, all of Theodore and Corey.

She forces her eyes away from the collection at scan the room, a desk, a laptop open on it flickering to some spreadsheet, what might have been an actual tonne of paperwork on it.

It had to be Theodore's room. She couldn't imagine Corey slaving over a spreadsheet at night after spending the days with her.

She puts a hand on the paperwork and skims the top page. It's a report on a certain stretch of road in Halesburg. She almost falls asleep just glancing at it.

"Be careful with that, they didn't number the pages." A calm warm voice slides across the large room startling her.

Turning she sees Theo sitting up in bed looking out at her. He isn't wearing a shirt and she hates every part of her that notices the cut of his body instead of the weak points he's displaying to her.

She takes her hand off the report and takes a letter opener from the desk. Holding it with the dull blade along her forearm.

"Going to kill me with a letter opener in my own bed?"

"Do you doubt I could do it?" She asks voice low as she walks towards the bed.

"Could? No. Not at all. But you won't."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"It would start a war-" he tells her but there's a smile pulling across his face that's fierce and dark like he loves this, "Plus it would make Corey cry. He's rather fond of me."

"He'd get over it." She is standing at the edge of the bed wondering the best way to get to him. He's sitting in the middle of the bed, tangled up in pale grey silky looking sheets, they pool around his waist and she's afraid that he might not be wearing anything at all.

"I very much doubt that." His smile grows wider, brighter, oddly colder when she climbs onto the bed, "I really didn't think you'd get into my bed so willingly."

"I'd go to hell to kill you Theodore." She growls and part of her loves the downturn of his mouth at the name.

She knows its the name and not the sentiment. She could have told him she loved him, that she would happily marry him, that she would give him the crown that apparently belonged to her and he would still frown if she ended it with Theodore.

She crawls carefully to him, slowly, and his eyes are glued to her in a way that makes her horribly uneasy. There isn't any rage or anger there, nothing particularly calculating in this moment he seems almost...  _Human_.

She reaches out with her free hand and pushes him slowly back into the bed and he lets her, lets her sit heavily on his hips and put the dull blade of the letter opener press against his neck.

There in his bed, the heat of his body sinking into her, those eyes human and steal all at once made this feel way too private.

Malia presses the dull blade hard, watching it dent his skin but all he does is smile.

Frustrated and confused at what exactly was happening she puts her other hand on his throat instead. Hand pressing hard into his throat.

He sputters something, and she just stares watching him struggle to breathe, his hands twisting in sheets, his lips turning pale but his eyes still on her with some strange kind of heat she can't explain but that she can strangely understand.

The flash of heat in him calls out to the raging burn of emotions in the core of her being like a friend, like a companion.

Why isn't he trying to stop her? Why doesn't he fight? She knows there's a fight in him, in his breath and bones and eyes. Even if he hid it so well under his even controlled tone.

He's fading and she finds her grip loosening on his throat faltering in her attempt.

A smile, thin, small, pulls across his mouth and it doesn't match the tyrant he is.

His hands finally move. They touch her face, her neck, fingers tangle in her hair. His hands wrap around her hair and she is startled by the way he pulls instead of pushes.

He's pulling her down close to his face and she braces herself with the letter opener in a tight grip against the headboard.

He pulls until their lips press together, his cold pressing up against her.

Kissing her.

Biting a little, teeth grazing lips, abusing them and causing her insides to freeze and drop before the press of his mouth against hers feels like death. She pulls away, pushing,  a roar of just angry sound rips from her mouth.

She moves off him and with a twist throws the letter opener at the headboard.

"Why did you do that!" She yells clamoring off the bed.

Theodore looks at her like she's the crazy one, "What have you never been kissed before?" He smiles at that climbing easily out of the bed.

He's wearing underwear thankfully.

"I lived in a forest not a cave." She growls at him thankful that that wasn't her first kiss. First kisses were supposed to be tentative and maybe sweet. That had been... Well none of those things.

The door to the bedroom rips open, "Theo! What's happened! Malia is gon-" Corey's shoulders sag, and he leans back against the intricately carved door and lets out a long breath, "You're okay."

Malia isn't sure which one he's referring to but Theodore seems to know. He pauses in front of her and runs his thumb across her red, bitten lip. Something burning in his eyes, that twists her, her lungs and heart held tight in his look. She didn't like this Theodore. This man was human, soft and hot and filled with real emotions, concerned about infrastructure and Corey's feelings and interested in her in a way that felt real.

She didn't like it at all and snaps her teeth at him.

She doesn't want him human. She wants him evil, a tyrant, a monster.

 

She had no problems with killing a monster.

 

Theodore smiles at her. The smile reaching his eyes, making him warm and human.

 

He turns away from her and she looks back at the headboard, at the letter opener sticking out of the wood. She could have easily killed him today. She could have just squeezed until he couldn't breath ever again.

 

Why hadn't she.

  
Why wasn't she able to kill him.

  
"They should be here any minute." Corey's voice shakes with nerves and catches her attention, "Are you sure this is a good idea Theo. Maybe you should wait until she doesn't want to kill you..."

  
Theo waves the idea away, "You worry too much."

  
"You don't worry enough." Corey tells his hands and she watches as Theo's face softens, the smile warm and sweet and soft even though his brother isn't paying any attention to the look and they don't even seem to remember that she's there at all.

 

"I worry plenty. Just not about Malia. I have you for that." He sounds tired as he puts on a housecoat and sits down at the large desk and picks up a report.

Corey takes her hand and leads her out of the room, she doesn't have a chance to retrieve her bag. She'll have to come back tonight for it, when he's asleep. Maybe she could kill him then, without his eyes one her.

Corey is talking in a stream, quiet and quick as he pulls her down the hall.

"Calm down Corey you're going to give yourself a coronary."

He stops in the long hall, this one is lined with strangers too.

He squeezes her hand and searches her face for something, "Are you okay?"

 

"Of course not." She tells him honestly and he tightens his grip on her fingers. A maid walks quietly behind him and he turns quickly to her.

 

"Make sure Theo gets his breakfast. He won't be in the dinning room today. And please send the doctor, make sure he's taking his vitamins."

 

She nods and curtsies and rushes away, soft clacks of her shoes barely noticeable.

 

Corey runs his hands through his hair and she notices for the first time what he's wearing. He's wearing what looks like a uniform. Navy tailored jacket with silver buttons and ropes, light colored pants and shining boots.

He looks handsome.

She looks down at her own outfit. Her combat boots over tight jeans ripped at the knees and a flannel shirt. There's still blood stains on the light colored plaid. She certainly doesn't look the part of the lost Hale heir, especially next to him.

"You dressed up."

He looks down at himself and tugs nervously at his jacket.

"Is it that obvious?" He whispers.

"Considering up until today you've been wearing jeans and t-shirts, yeah."

A blush rises in his cheeks, "I should change." He seems so flustered and she doesn't understand.

"It's just the tutor right? Wear whatever you want." She waves it away, she never really understood peoples fascination with impressing people by the clothes they wore.

There's a fzzt of noise, a radio somewhere and one of the attendants comes running from another room.

"Mr. Yukimura is here." She tells him quickly, "They are in the Library."

"They?"

"Oh god." Corey jumps nervously and takes her hand again rushing them towards the library.

Corey stops them just outside the library and pulls at his uniform before straightening her collar.

She rolls her eyes violently before pushing him off, he's about a second away from licking his fingers and cleaning her face and while she likes Corey she would have to kill him for that.

Malia enters the library and sees the they, sees the reason Corey must have been in freak out mode.

Mr. Yukimura is standing at a table with a young black man with his arms full of books and a very pretty young Asian woman who is smiling nervously at them.

Corey can't blame him for wanting to look nice for her she's adorable. She bounces nervously on her heels before rushing to greet them.

Mr. Yukimura puts his hand on her shoulder before she gets close enough to do anything.

"Your highness, I want to extend my thanks for allowing me to bring my daughter and assistant." He taps the girl on the shoulder and she curtsies low, eyes down.

 

Malia glances over at Corey but he's not paying any attention to The Yukimura's. His eyes are glued to the boy, a flush in his cheeks that makes her bite back a smile.

  
"This is my daughter Kira and my assistant Mason Hewitt."

  
She steps forward and shakes his hand, her grip firm and strong. Kira smiles brightly at her and Mason stands on the other side of the older man flipping through an ancient looking book.

  
"I see we have a lot of work to do."

  
Malia looks at him confused, "What do you mean? I have a great handshake. My dad always told me the importance of a firm handshake."

  
"Your dad? You mean that man who kidnapped-" The words are out of Kira's mouth before Corey can stop her. He's shaking his head so violently it might fall off.

 

"No. I mean my dad. The one who raised me and taught me to read and walk. The man who was killed trying to protect me." She tells them with clenched hands and jaw. She turns on her heel and starts to leave the library.

 

"Malia-" Corey calls out after her.

 

"No. I'm not doing this, I'm not marrying him, I didn't agree to any of this."

 

"Where are you going?" Kira calls out but she doesn't answer, "Where is she going? I'm sorry!" Kira is rushing after her but stumbles on heels somewhere behind her as she turns to go up a flight of stairs she's never seen before.

 


End file.
